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By Yasmine SalehReuters • Monday September 9, 2013 7:16 AM

CAIRO — The Sinai-based Islamist militant group Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis claimed responsibility
yesterday for an attempt last week to kill the Egyptian interior minister in Cairo, and promised
more attacks in revenge for a crackdown on Egypt’s Islamists.

Islamist militancy has risen sharply in the region adjoining Israel and the Gaza Strip and
elsewhere in Egypt since the army deposed Islamist president Mohammed Morsi two months ago.

Thursday’s daylight attack was the most spectacular so far, as a suicide car bomber blew himself
up next to Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim’s convoy as he left his Cairo home for work in an
armored limousine. The bomber, a passer-by and an unidentified person were killed and more than 20
wounded.

“God allowed us to break the security system of the minister of interior … through a suicide
operation committed by one of Egypt’s lions that made the interior butcher see death with his eyes,
and what is to come will be worse,” the group said yesterday in a statement posted on a jihadist
website.

Last year the same group, whose name means “Supporters of Jerusalem,” claimed responsibility for
rocket attacks launched on Israel from Sinai.

On Saturday, the Egyptian army launched an offensive against Islamist militants in north Sinai.
The troops deployed dozens of tanks as well as armored vehicles and attack helicopters, killing at
least nine militants and arresting nine suspects, security officials said.

Sinai’s eastern border with Israel and Gaza is a particularly sensitive one, and Israel made its
concerns known when jihadist groups expanded into a security vacuum left by the fall of Egypt’s
veteran autocrat Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

Many of Morsi’s critics accused him of helping the jihadists by releasing militants with links
to Sinai shortly after he took office in June 2012. Morsi argued that all those set free had either
completed their terms or failed to receive due process because they had been tried by special
military courts.

Attacks on Egyptian security forces in Sinai have become a near-daily occurrence, and around 50
have been killed since Morsi was deposed.